Why mathematicians ignore holidays: Oct 31 = Dec 25.

2007.01.31

The Beka swift arrived today. As advertised, it was easily assembled in a few minutes with no tools, and it holds my smallest skeins nicely. And whee! the ball bearings make it spin like a dervish :) I still want to finish it with steel wool and Danish oil to get a smoother, snag-resistant surface, which I'll do whenever the temperature approaches freezing or above.

The ballwinder is another story, though. It looks as though they're back-ordered to the beginning of April. I almost didn't put myself on the waiting list, since I have serious objections to websites that only work with Internet Exploder (blech), but I forced myself into Mickeysoft land long enough to do it.

2007.01.25

Oh how I wish the book deadline was May 15 instead of Feb 15! The latest shawl is pinned out down in the basement with a fan blowing over it, but it's pretty cold down there right now. I'd much rather block outside in warmer weather when the item will most likely dry in an afternoon.

6 pm update: Wow, the wind chill advisory has apparently helped by making the relative humidity plummet, because he shawl is almost dry. Of course, I still hate blocking in the winter ...

2007.01.22

I also have a first edition of Color in Spinning by Deb Menz and the Unicorn reprint of Natural Dyes by Gwen Fereday. Both are hardcovers in very good condition with only minor wear on the dust jacket. Leave a comment or email me from the About page for more details.

2007.01.19

The cat box lives inside a cat crate. This allows me to 1) close off the box quickly when I run out to the mailbox, etc, preventing any canine residents from surfing for tootsie rolls; and 2) clean up any "overpee" easily.

Jeeves has recently realized that the cat crate sits by a hot air vent so now he runs in there to bask when the furnace ignites. This is deja vu all over again, because my former feline residents (left to right: Hannah, Travis and Jasper) did exactly this. Huey, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care. Apparently, he is made of sterner stuff, as befits a black panther.

In fibrous news, the shawl project has grown. Unfortunately, it's colliding with an editing deadline on a pattern that I curse more and more by the minute. (Note to so-called designers in the knitting universe: basic algebra is a good thing. You will suffer far less pain if the math geek editor doesn't have to stab the voodoo doll with pins every time she needs to concoct major rewrites of your fuzzy pattern.)

And I'm getting the Beka swift and NKK ballwinder for my upcoming birthday - woo! The swift should be on its way, but I'm still waiting to hear when the ballwinder backorders have cleared. Or so I hope, since the scripting on the NKK web page is more than a little sub-par.

2007.01.12

One of these days I'd like to acquire the Beka swift and the NKK ballwinder. I don't like umbrella swifts, because the wooden ones are fairly easy to break, the plastic/metal ones are nasty, and the construction of either type fights gravity. (I thought only Cornell engineers were stupid enough to try that - you should see all the places on the Cornell campus where they think water flows uphill...) Now, I already have a very nice vertical skeinwinder/swift, but unfortunately some of the smaller skeins I've been working with don't fit onto it. That's where the Beka would help.

My ballwinder is about 25 years old, and the little plastic gears are showing their age by making ominous noises. I had seen blurbs about the NKK winder but hadn't given it much thought until Theresa showed off hers. Very nice and much better than the poorly designed Fricke languishing somewhere here in a dark corner.

Tomorrow's our spinning guild's Rock Day party. I think I'll pass, though. I'm just not in the mood for the hordes of crunchy granola children who inevitably attend. Instead, I'll keep working on the new shawl, much to the delight of the feline units who are keenly aware of a stationary lap!

2007.01.09

Happy new year to all! I've been fibrously busy but not on stuff I can blog about yet, except in general terms ...

I've spent a lot of time lately swatching for next book submission and finally came up with something. So on Sunday morning, I cast on and knit a few rows, then went off to the barn to dispense carrots and scritches. When I returned home, I found the circular needle lying on the floor at a distance from the ball of yarn and detached from it. Apparently, Jeeves had gotten bored and explored new horizons, living up to his (usually affectionately bestowed) nickname of "Tiny Badness".

Well, I'm not one to splice yarn after so short a distance, so I started over. Good thing the fourth season of Spooks/MI-5 arrived today so that I can do some marathon knitting! My hope is to finish knitting by the end of next week, so fingers & paws crossed for another bout of unseasonable weather for blocking!